Sunday Times 2
New Christian sign directory launched
“I couldn’t come to terms with the fact that all 10 children failed!” exclaims General Secretary of the Ceylon Bible Society (CBS) Lakshani Fernando. After her visit to The School for the Hearing Impaired in Ratmalana in 2008 she discovered that all 10 candidates who sat for the Christianity paper at the Ordinary Level Examinations had not been successful.
“They had a hard time understanding concepts,” was what Ms. Fernando deduced after speaking to the staff of this 100-year-old school. This was simply because the ever expanding sign language used in Sri Lanka did not cover certain Christian concepts and words.Having taught Christianity to differently able children before, believing that “It is not impossible” Ms. Fernando along with the teachers of The School for the Hearing Impaired in Ratmalana and the teachers of St. Joseph’s School for the Hearing Impaired in 
Ragama set out to standardise and even invent a Christian Sign Index for the first time in the history of Bible Societies all over the world.
Having stumbled in to the School in Ratmalana to hand out Bibles to children at a nominal cost under the Mary Jones Fund, she admits that it was by chance that the topic of Christianity as a subject came up when she spoke with the staff. “At that time I thought there was absolutely no point in giving the children Bibles if they can’t understand it in the first place.”
Broadly interpreting ‘language’ to include Braille, Sign and even music The Ceylon Bible Society took up this task of inventing a Christian Sign Index. Recognising and appreciating the great deal of patience needed to teach children with special needs Ms. Fernando shares, “The trouble was that teachers had no other choice but to use different signs to try and communicate meanings that were not provided for by the existing sign language. This naturally meant that once the class was taught by a new teacher the children were confused when different signs were used by the new teacher.” This meant that the teachers had to standardise the existing signs and come up with a few new ones as per the need. Manager of Communications, promotions and research at Ceylon Bible society Wilakshitha Mendis assures “All the senior students and teachers were very enthusiastic about our project, and participated really well.”
The School in Kaithadi, Jaffna run by the Anglican diocese was using certain Tamil signs to communicate Christianity to its hearing impaired students. “We had to align both the Sinhala signs we came up with and the Tamil signs that were used in the North,” she said, explaining that now much like certain ordinary Sinhala and Tamil words, Sign words in the two languages bear resemblance as well.
This new sign directory was launched on December 1 at the Cathedral of Christ The Living Saviour in Bauddhaloka Mawatha, a special moment signifying the end of a two and half year long project. Hoping to now expand this to include signs of even flora, fauna and geography in the Bible the CBS is already making preparations to start volume 2 of this directory. “We hope to get it recognised as a supplement to the current sign index in Sri Lanka,” Ms. Fernando said.